How Rikers Drove My Innocent Patient to Plead Guilty

Nothing I learned as a master’s student in social work could have prepared me for what I saw in my five years at New York’s 10-jail, 14,000-inmate Rikers Island, where I started out as an intern in the Mental Health Department and quit as an assistant chief of mental health in the 500-cell solitary confinement unit. I worked at Rikers,a jail now notorious for inmate neglect and abuse, thanks to a storm of scathing media reports and lawsuits, at the height of the Giuliani administration’s celebrated crackdown on crime—when the inmate population ballooned to a record 24,000 inmates. I saw a woman chewing on a strand of Christmas lights, the colored shards of glass mixing with blood as she registered her sentence of 25 to life on a drug-related charge; I saw a dazed and moaning male inmate, who had obviously just been beaten, being propped up by guards, his legs bouncing off the steps as they carted him to the clinic. And I also saw things that were less sensationalist, but just as devastating; things that reminded me that I was only seeing up-close a defunct justice system that operates every day on an enormous scale.

One of the hardest lessons during my five years at Rikers came in the case of 23-year-old inmate Chris Barnett, who was driven by the brutality of the jail to confess to a crime he didn’t commit. Chris hobbled into the clinic on crutches, and his referral read, “Just came from hospital—evaluate for depression.” A slight young man, the 23-year-old carefully eased himself into the seat across from me and tearfully told me that two weeks earlier, he’d been out for a carefree motorcycle ride when a teenager darted out from behind a bus. “It was like he fell out of the sky and was on top of my bike. Before I knew what happened, it was over.” An accident, it seemed to me—but, I would learn, that was a distinction that didn’t really matter to the over-worked, over-crowded 10-jail complex that now exemplifies so much of America's criminal justice dysfunction.

Story Continued Below

Despite the Sixth Amendment’s heralded guarantee of a speedy trial, I learned at Rikers, trial is often years away. This would be a long wait for anyone, but for the detainee who can’t afford a couple thousand offhand in bail—which is a lot of detainees—the pretrial years must be spent behind bars. The only alternative would be the expedient plea bargain, frequently offered by the district attorney: If the accused foregoes trial and accepts some measure of guilt, he will typically receive a lighter sentence than what would have been handed down had he gone to trial and lost. But what it also means is that detainees will agree to it, not necessarily because they’re guilty, but because the pathway to trial is just too daunting.

And, Chris would teach me, it’s especially daunting at Rikers. (It still is—according to figures from late March, over 400 people had been held there for more than two years without being convicted.)

Chris sustained a broken hip, broken collarbone and internal injuries, but the teenager was dead. Chris denied he’d been drinking, and a Breathalyzer confirmed it. He also said he hadn’t been speeding, which was borne out by eyewitnesses as well as a police test on the tire marks. Though Chris had been neither drinking nor speeding, he still was arrested for vehicular homicide, which perplexed me, as this seemed like a clear-cut accident. But I assumed there had to be more to this. After all, I only heard the inmates' version of things.

In the sessions that followed, I learned that Chris, like most at Rikers, had been raised in a poor neighborhood, had dropped out of high school and was involved in minor skirmishes with the law. But after a couple of misdemeanor charges, he went back to school, earned a GED and was thrilled to have landed an entry-level position on Wall Street. The pay was low, but the future was promising, and Chris was smart enough to see the possibilities.

“They’re still holding my job for me,” he said, proudly.

Chris’s father was out of the picture, and his mother was not well. His family lacked the resources to pay his bail, but he did have a steady girlfriend who promised to see him through the ordeal.

Considering his life circumstances, Chris had done remarkably well. And on a personal level I liked him and felt for him and the predicament he was in. An accident like this could have happened to anyone. And based on his continued impressive behavior, I was convinced that this was, indeed, an accident. But what especially intrigued me about Chris was that he didn’t have a prior felony. A lifelong black mark, the felony forever casts suspicion and serves as a permanent barrier to job opportunities, regardless of positive changes made as an individual matures. Virtually all the inmates had at least one felony, mostly for nonviolent offenses. Many had ruefully told me it had been their dream to become a fireman, or even a policeman, only to realize—too late—that because of the felony, this could never be. This one difference set Chris Barnett apart from thousands of others I saw.

The district attorney was offering Chris a plea bargain of two to four years. If he accepted it, he would serve two years in prison upstate and remain on probation for the remaining two. But as part of the offer, he would also have to accept the felony. If he insisted on a trial and lost, his sentence could be in the range of eight to 10 years. There was a lot at stake here. More than anything, Chris wanted to hold on to his job and the life he was creating. But if he accepted the felony, he could say good-bye to Wall Street, and frankly most other job opportunities, forever.

As Chris hashed it over with me, he became angry. “I’m sorry this kid is dead—but I didn’t do anything wrong. He ran out from behind a bus. I wasn’t drinking and I wasn’t speeding. It was an accident! I’m not accepting this offer! Doesn’t he have any responsibility for what happened? I got hurt too! I’ll take my chances at trial.”

I was delighted by his decision. Although I knew that difficult days lay ahead for Chris, I vowed to provide the moral support he would need to see his day in court. “You’re not alone in this,” I told him. “I’ll help you in any way I can. If an issue comes up between our sessions, have your housing officer call me. I’m only a phone call away.”

We stood up and shook hands, and a determined Chris Barnett positioned himself on his crutches and was on his way.

***

“Miss Buser,” Chris Barnett told me one day, “my girlfriend came to see me the other day and she got hassled by the officers in the visit house. Now she’s not coming out here again.”

“I’m sorry, Chris,” I said. “A few people bring drugs in, so they make it hard on everyone. But you can’t let that get you down. This will all be over after your trial.”

“Yes, I know, but I’m starting to wonder if I’m going to make it to trial.”

A week later, Chris was visibly upset when he arrived for his session. “On court days, it’s four in the morning when they wake you, and you wanna know how they do it? The CO kicks the cot and yells, ‘Get up, asshole!’ All I did was drive a motorcycle down the street!”

But things took a decisive turn when his lawyer, who had long supported Chris’s plan to go to trial, suggested the plea bargain instead. “I don’t understand it!” Chris told me. “After I got arrested, he was all gung ho about trial. But the other day in court, he did a complete turnaround. Now he’s telling me to take the cop-out. I don’t know what to think. He told me to call him and we’d talk, but when I do, I just get his answering machine. Here I am, going to the law library every day, trying to get smart about my case, and now this! I think I need a different attorney. But the guys in the law library tell me that only the judge can assign a different lawyer because the lawyer is court-appointed. And they say judges won’t do it ’cause everybody’d want different lawyers.”

This was true. The inmates were constantly rejoicing or bemoaning their luck when it came to their court-appointed counsel. With so much riding on the competence of the lawyer, an inmate unhappy with his attorney will go to great lengths to persuade a judge to reassign the case. Most are unsuccessful and need to factor in the quality of the lawyer in any trial decision.

With Chris’s resolve eroding, I had the sinking feeling that he’d never see his day in court and would instead accept the plea bargain and the accompanying felony. If this was the case, there would be no return to Wall Street. Far from it, he would be scrambling for employment, forever faced with trying to explain away the felony. Here was a bright young man with a promising future who was involved in what appeared to be an accident. I couldn’t help thinking: This wasn’t justice.